Translation of the abstract (English)

The diagnosis and prognosis of different phaenotypes of the malignant melanoma, an agressiv skin cancer, is still based on morphological and histological criteria. An accurate distinction between benigne and malignant tumours as well as a precise prediction of the clinical outcome is hampered by the missing of reliable molecular markers. Therefore in this dissertation a molecular profiling of ...

Translation of the abstract (English)

The diagnosis and prognosis of different phaenotypes of the malignant melanoma, an agressiv skin cancer, is still based on morphological and histological criteria. An accurate distinction between benigne and malignant tumours as well as a precise prediction of the clinical outcome is hampered by the missing of reliable molecular markers. Therefore in this dissertation a molecular profiling of gene expression in malignant melanoma was done to a) estimate the scale of genetic alterations during melanoma progression and b) to identify differentially expressed genes which could serve as progression markers and furthermore could provide targets for new forms of therapy. For this study cell variants which were derived from different human melanoma cell-lines and selected for increased tumourigenicity, invasiveness and metastatic potential served as progression models. Differential gene expression in this models was investigated using the RNA arbitrarily primed PCR method and the recently invented cDNA array technique. With both methods about 2 of all detectable transkripts showed a differential regulation related to the selection process in the aforementioned progression models. The RNA Fingerprinting revealed 22 novel cDNAs which had not been sequenced in any other experimental system before. Another 41 regulated cDNAs were identified in the microarray analysis. Among this set of potetial progression markers six genes, which are considered to play an essential role in tumor progression, were selected for further verification and were confirmed to be regulated in a progression related fashion by Northern blot experiments. These genes offer promising approaches for the molecular diagnosis and prognosis of malignant melanoma as well as the developement of new therapies against this tumour.